Better than a Boyfriend
by Lorata
Summary: When the Brutus-inspired line of manly-scented candles throws the Capitol fans into a frenzy, Brutus would really rather forget the whole thing exists, but his fellow Victors - especially Lyme - aren't going to let him off that easily.


The Career Program in Two never really talked about _after_. They gave hints and made vague statements about how winning didn't mean the end of the Victors' responsibility, but the trainers and informational videos that Brutus and the candidates listened to always couched it positively. Win the Games and receive honour, glory and riches, just like the Capitol promised; while it didn't mean a life free of duty or service to the Capitol, it did mean the house and the stipend came without the need for daily work like the miners or crafters or shop owners who kept the rest of the district running. No point in dwelling on it really, though, when only one kid out of a hundred actually made it that far.

What they said is true; mentoring is an expectation but not a requirement, and those Victors who don't get stipend payments in their accounts just the same. It's Brutus' own drive that pushes him to work, a pride that refuses to allow him to receive compensation without doing anything to earn it. The Centre didn't talk about that but Brutus accepts it all the same; he makes his business trips into the Capitol, he builds up a solid sponsor base and makes himself visible enough in his own district to maintain a constant and positive presence in Two.

It means that while the more lackadaisical outliers might consider mentoring a job that only lasts two months per year, Brutus rarely spends a day without some kind of gainful employ. Even if his own kid isn't going to be in the Arena that year there are sponsors to be wooed for the general Two coffers, or Games trends to analyze, or future donations to lock in and have countersigned before the afterglow wears off and business reluctance seeps back in. He receives his weekly calendar from Victor Affairs every Sunday, filled with appointments and appearances and anything else that needs doing, and even with all that Brutus finds ample time to work out, to take hikes up the mountains and sit overlooking his beautiful, breathtaking district — and, of course, to needle Lyme.

The only part Brutus never really got a handle on is the endorsements. It feels dishonest to put his name to a product he'll never use; the only problem is that there's nothing the Capitol manufactures and sells to the public that Brutus would ever actually have a use for even if he wanted to. Most of it is outright lies — a workout routine that promises a Career's body in only twenty minutes per day, which is about how much time Brutus spends on stretching before each workout alone, or, worst of all, shampoo for men when Brutus has shaved his head since he was sixteen years old — and while Brutus has snapped necks and swung swords and not thought twice, this part doesn't sit right with him.

"It keeps the people happy," Odin says when Brutus asks his mentor, frowning at the ad copy for a hiking shoe that would fall apart in five minutes on the actual trails in Two. "They don't actually think you designed it, or even that you use it. I suspect most aren't going to use it themselves. It's simply a point of connection for the people, a way of getting close to their heroes."

It still don't make much sense to Brutus, but the universe doesn't owe him detailed explanations for everything he has to do, it just expects him to do it. And so Brutus signs his name to the papers, the staff at Victor Affairs pens testimonies on his behalf to be included in the endorsement, and once in a while he has to go down for a day of filming for commercials, but for the most part that's about it.

The products, at least, are nothing amazing, and none make their way back to Two, so it isn't as though he runs the risk of anyone in-district having seen it and embarrassing him. In fact, the only one who actually goes out of her way to make sure to grab up everything Brutus endorses and bring it up in conversation is Lyme.

(Brutus tried doing the same to her once, except Lyme only endorses things like workout tapes and bourbon and finds the entire process endlessly amusing. Impossible to shame the shameless, alas, and that seems to go for both Lyme and her Victor.)

As the years go by Brutus at least gets used to it, and he stops worrying so much about diluting his brand after Victor Affairs filters out the more ridiculous and uncharacteristic requests. He trusts good people to do their job and have his back, at the end of the day, and while Lyme has an uncanny ability to sniff out when one of his advertisements is going to be on television and invites herself over just in time to turn it on, it's really not that bad.

Until the day a delivery arrives at the gate when Brutus is coming back in from his morning run. "Ah, morning there, sir," says the deliveryman, touching his fist to his chest. "Got a nice package here, straight from the Capitol. If you don't mind signing that'll save me an extra level of paperwork."

"Sure thing," Brutus says, and scrawls his signature across the pad while the man waits. The box is big but not so much that Brutus can't tuck it under one arm on the way in, and he drops the whole thing on his kitchen table and heads downstairs for his post-run weights. By the time he finishes his workout and makes himself a protein shake, he's forgotten about the delivery altogether.

Lyme notices when she stops by that afternoon, of course. "What's this?" she asks, poking the box with one finger. It doesn't skid across the surface until she pushes with a bit more strength, and she raises her eyebrows. "You get drunk and order something off the shopping network?"

"I'm not our Victors," Brutus says dryly. Devon and Misha like to get silly and order ridiculous things just to see what shows up later, and then they take bets on who ordered it and arm wrestle for who gets to keep it. Brutus does not understand kids these days, that's for damn sure. "It's probably another free sample. I tell them not to, but —"

Lyme shoots him a toothy grin, then pulls a knife from her pocket and slides it under the top flaps. "This is why I stick with whiskey," she says. "They can send me all the complimentary bottles they want and that's fine with me."

"Help yourself," Brutus says in his best 'by all means' Odin impression, but of course Lyme only laughs and opens the box with a flourish. A second later her face lights up like it's the last day in the Arena and the Gamemakers sent her a full meal and killed her opponent for her with a lightning bolt at the same time. Brutus' stomach decides to join his toes. "What?"

"Oh nothing," Lyme says sweetly, and oh shit on a snowpile this is going to end with blood — if he's lucky. She reaches into the box and pulls out a cylinder, resting it on her palm and holding it out.

The room fills with a strange, sweet scent, cloying and curling in Brutus' nostrils, vaguely reminiscent of the mountains except not really. It's the smell version of a drawing by a child who's never seen the subject of the illustration, and Brutus blinks. "The hell is that, perfume?"

"It's a candle," Lyme says. "They're all candles. On a theme, it looks like. This one is 'Smell of Victory'." She peers ostentatiously into the box, still grinning like a jackal-mutt, and Brutus did not kill thirteen people and train for eleven years for this. "There's also 'Pain and Gain', I think that one has cinnamon in it, that will be nice, and there's also 'Hero's Musk', 'Quarry Dust' — what would they even put in that, I wonder if there are ingredient lists? — and 'Hard Day's Work' —"

"All right, enough," Brutus snaps, snatching the candle from her hand. He stares at it but sure enough, there's one of his official stock photos, scowling and shirtless with his arms folded, pasted over a backdrop of pine trees and the curve of the mountains. District 1's mountains, mind, that's Hawk's Peak or he's a grandmother, but at this point who even cares. "Fuck me blind," Brutus says.

He knows Lyme is enjoying herself because she doesn't take the bait and make a crack about how it's not even her birthday. She's still rooting around in the box, and then she stops and lets out a sound that in any other reality might actually be a giggle. Brutus cannot handle this today. Or ever. Why did he bother waking up this morning, anyway?

"Everything I've ever done in life has led up to this," Lyme says reverently. She holds up a magazine, one of those fan publications put out by enthusiastic Victors' Club members, the ones that Brutus knows damn well the Victor Affairs staff pass around the office each month because they always snicker when they say 'good morning' the day after a new issue. "There's an article here. They say smelling the candles are as good as having you right there. It's even better than a real boyfriend. They're calling it —" she makes that sound again, and Brutus would enjoy that if it were in any other situation but now he just wants the ground to open up and swallow them both, damned package included. "It's unofficially known as the Brutus Boyfriend Candle Collection."

"Fuck _me_ ," Brutus says again, as Lyme breaks out into peals of laughter.

"They don't need to!" she squawks out, eyes sparkling. "They have this instead! They burn it beside their beds and close their eyes and have sexy dreams about you chopping firewood and carrying them over the threshold of your mountain sex cabin!"

Brutus drags a hand down his face. "Get out of my house," he says. "You're banned. From everything."

"Oh no, how will I cope," Lyme flutters. She hefts the box into her arms, and Brutus has half a mind to stop her because he knows she's only going to take it straight to Misha and Devon and he'll never hear the end of this forever, but what is he going to do with it? He could toss the box on a bonfire, only he's half afraid that burning all those candles at once would summon some sort of terrifying Gamemaker clone of himself. "I guess I'll just have to keep a candle for myself in memory of our friendship."

"Out!" Brutus snaps, jabbing a finger in her direction. Lyme's cackles follow her all the way out the door, along with the confusing mix of sandalwood and cloves.

* * *

Misha and Devon have a field day with it, of course they do. Misha makes Brutus a cross-stitch with all the names of the candles on it, complete with all the best imagery from Two, and Brutus sighs and accepts it because he's never known anyone who puts more of her own time and effort into being an asshole. Devon doesn't make anything himself but there's a candle burning when Brutus comes over, and Brutus refuses to acknowledge it so they make dinner to the accompanying scent of a testosterone and wax cocktail.

"I actually do like them," Devon says later as they're eating on the sofa, and Brutus shoots him a look. "No, I'm serious! I had a nightmare the other night, and it's probably stupid but I didn't want to call you so I tried lighting a candle and — well, it worked. I fell asleep and it didn't happen again."

Brutus cuffs the back of Devon's head, and the boy grins sunnily at him. "You can always call me," Brutus reminds him, but he doesn't push too hard. He would have rather stuck his hand in the garbage disposal than call his own mentor about a nightmare more than a year out, so fair enough. The kids are meant to slowly handle a release of responsibility, after all. "But at least the damn things have some use besides causing you all entertainment."

"I did have a dream after, actually," Devon says, eyes wide and innocent, and oh hell. "You were on a mountain, calling down your pet hawk from the sky so you could fly off and hunt lions —"

"That's enough, you," Brutus says, and shoves Devon off the couch.

* * *

The worrisome part is that Lyme disappears for a while after that. Brutus would have expected her to hide candles in his refrigerator or his sock drawer or inside the toes of his boots, but there's nothing. A younger, more foolish Brutus might have taken this as a good thing, assumed that Lyme got all her kicks by pawning the pranks off onto her Victor, but Brutus is about ten years too jaded to believe something like that.

No, Lyme has something planned — she never forgets, and most definitely never gives up the opportunity to torment Brutus — and the longer it takes for things to happen, the worse it's going to be when it does. One of these days Brutus fears Lyme won't do anything at all, that she'll only let him think she's plotting something and drive himself half-insane waiting for it while she happily eats breakfast and goes over polling data and fucks her young, pretty sponsor boys into the wall, or whatever she does in her free time. Brutus still hasn't been able to come up with anything as revenge in case she ever pulls that one.

It's almost a relief when Lyme shows up at his door with another box, grinning toothily and bouncing her weight from one foot to the other. At least it will be over, and if it's not exactly complimentary to compare a visit from his closest friend to the moment when the final tribute appears in the distance, well, nobody said they were friends because they're _nice_.

"Do I even want to know?" Brutus asks, but he lets her in because his curiosity won't let him slam the door, Games-damn it all. One of these days he'll be the death of himself.

"I had Victor Affairs make a few calls." Lyme drops the box on his table and slices it open with her knife, leaving Brutus to shake off an odd sense of deja vu. "You know, I looked into it and your stupid manly candles are really popular. They can't keep up with production in the Capitol without a three-month backlog."

Brutus stares at her. "You're fucking kidding me."

"I'm really not," Lyme says. The grin drops the edges for a second, turning almost genuine. "I'm pretty sure these stupid candles are gonna feed your next kid for a week."

Brutus lowers himself down into his seat, a mix of emotions swirling around in his chest. Except that Lyme still hasn't explained the new package, and Brutus eyes her warily. "What's this, then? New scents?"

"Yeah," Lyme says brightly. She finally gets the box open and holds out a candle, turning it this way and that in her palm. "Not for you, though. I got myself set up with a line of my own."

"You —" Brutus opens his mouth, closes it, tries again. "What?"

"You didn't think I was going to let you get away with having the manliest scents in Panem, did you?" Lyme grins and hands the candle over. "This one's 'Better Than a Boyfriend', for the optimistic lady fans. I've got a whole bunch of them now that make yours smell like roses and petit-fours." She keeps rooting through the box, making pleased noises to herself as she picks up one after the other and checks the description.

"The fuck is a petit-four," Brutus mutters, snatching up a candle and smelling it. It has the same artificial scent of the mountains, mixed with a hint of musk and spice — and also, for reasons Brutus doesn't understand, makes him want to hit things. "Well that sure is something."

Lyme laughs and takes it back. "Yeah. So I guess we'll see which one of us has the more devoted creepy fans."

Brutus leans back in his chair, steepling his fingers and giving Lyme a slow once over. "So lemme get this straight. You're turning this into a competition?"

She shows her teeth, sharp and predatory. "You bet I am. Wanna make a wager on who sells more by the summer? You've even got a week's handicap."

Brutus curls his lip, and he stands up and shoves his chair back. "Why not," he says, and holds out his hand for Lyme to slap. "Loser has to have a public date with a sponsor of the winner's choice."

Lyme barks out a laugh and smacks his hand hard enough to sting. "You're on," she says. She takes the candle and sticks it back in the box, then lifts it back under her arm. "Come on, I'm going to take these to Victor Affairs. Let them sell the extras and take it as a bonus."

Brutus cocks an eyebrow. "You're not gonna keep them?"

"Are you shitting me?" Lyme snorts. "I don't want that in my house, it'll make the whole place stink. Why do you think I brought them here while I opened them?"

Brutus rolls his eyes and jostles her shoulder, hoping to make her drop the box, but Lyme's grip stays firm. "You're a real delight, you know that?"

Lyme winks at him. "Save the compliments for Marjorie Flanglehammer," she says sweetly. "You'll need it."

Brutus gives her the finger, and when she's talking to the gate guards he sneaks a hand into the box to steal a Better than Boyfriend candle, sticking it down the back of his shirt before Lyme turns around. Artemisia will appreciate the gift, he's sure.


End file.
